Nurseyit Niyazbekov from Kazakhstan traveled 17 thousand kilometers on a motorcycle and visited 14 European countries in 50 days. He told Kaz.tengritravel.kz about how his trip went and the difficulties he encountered on the way.
The idea of going to Europe by motorcycle came to my mind about two years ago
“The idea of going to Europe by motorcycle occurred to me about two years ago but due to the pandemic, I had to postpone this plan. At the end of last May, I decided to put my idea on action. To plan a trip, you first need to solve several problems. The first of them is to get a Schengen visa and the second is motorcycle travel insurance. I waited for about three weeks for the visa. I sent my motorcycle from Almaty to Atrav in order to shorten my trip in Kazakhstan. On my way back from Europe, I also came from Atyrav to Almaty by direct flight.
I prepared my travel documents and submitted them to the Italian consulate. The process was not easy. Because people usually travel by plane but in my case, they asked me to make reservations from all the hotels on my route as I plan to cross many borders by a motorcycle. I made 17 reservations in total. Since my sister lives in Milan, I was planning to stay longer in Italy, so I applied to the Italian consulate.
Roads in Turkey and Italy and service areas on the road are very good.
Roads in Turkey and Italy and service areas on the road are very good. Therefore, there are many convenient places where you can eat, refuel, rest and spend the night. Only Italy is more expensive than Turkey. For example, everything was expensive in Switzerland as well, but since country itself is not so big, I rarely encountered service areas along the way.
My route was as follows: I went from Atyrav to Astrakhan, then to Grozny, then to Vladikavkaz, then to Tiflis, Batum, Trabzon, Samsun, Ankara, İzmir. I boarded the ferry to reach Greece in Izmir. After reaching Athens, I went through Arnavutluk and the Adriatic Sea to Karadag, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Italy. After I reached Italy in Trieste, I came through Venice, Milan, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Tuscany, Genoa, Domodossola and from there I came to Switzerland. I stayed there for five days.
During this time, I had the opportunity to visit the capital of Switzerland and saw the main tourist attractions – lakes, peaks, passes, they were magnificent. Then I returned to Italy and went to the Dolomites. Then I went to Slovenia but my motorcycle broke down there. After repairing it, I went to Slovakia then to Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey. I returned to Kazakhstan with my previous route.
